Monster Hunter Stories 2 is an interesting game. I never played the first one so I came into this completely blind and not knowing what to expect other than its comparisons to Pokemon. I don’t like Pokemon, in fact I really don’t like Pokemon. The first game I played was HeartGold and I thoroughly enjoyed it, definitely my favorite Pokemon game and maybe one of my favorite games in general. Every subsequent game I’ve tried has been me hoping to relive HeartGold and the experience falling flat in various aspects. Although that’s a discussion for another day. I don’t really agree with the notion that MHS2 is like Pokemon when the only comparable feature is… catching monsters and at that point I want to say this is much closer to Monster Rancher than anything else really. Anyway, after finishing the main story after a whopping 40 hours, I’m still a little conflicted on how to feel about the game but I can say for certain I thoroughly enjoyed it. The visuals are absolutely incredible and possibly the highest point of the game and its combat system, while simple and maybe a bit too easy, is fun and engaging enough to play around with. Unfortunately, the game is marred by what I believe to be awful characters and weak storytelling.
First off, I really love Monster Hunter as a series. I’ve been playing them since Freedom on the PS2 with the dumb network adapters and have been playing every single game on release and, against my better judgement, double dipping on the Console/PC releases for the recent games. Taking this notoriously difficult series and turning it into essentially a kid friendly JRPG experience, which may seem off putting to some, worked far better than I thought it would. The cel-shaded graphics are absolutely gorgeous and incredibly well done. Just about every environment looks vibrant colorful. Even if “dungeons” are mostly copy pasted map segments, the overworld areas are beautiful. It's to the point where I wish PC Rise would adapt this style even though it’s certainly not happening. Both character and monster models are great and the cartoonish style does not detract how fearsome these monsters look and are. Just about everything this game does visually is fantastic, cutscenes included and animations during battles.
The combat system is a traditional turn based triangle system that’s essentially rock-paper-scissors. You have your monster partner (monstie), you, and a party member (buddy) that’s either a Rider with their own monstie, or a Hunter who is solo but has boosted stats to make up for the lack of a monstie. Monsters will attack in one of the three elements they specialize in and you choose to attack in one of the three elements, ideally the one that counters the monsters. Whoever the monster is targeting, both will enter a Head-to-Head with the winning element coming out on top and dealing extra damage while receiving reduced damage. Equal elements will result in a draw with each member dealing comparatively neutral damage. If you and your monstie (or buddy’s monstie) use the same superior element on the monster whilst it’s targeting either you, you’ll do a Double Attack instead of a normal attack, resulting in boosted damage and cancelling the monster’s action. Your buddy can also use double attacks with theirs or your monstie. This is basically what the entire combat system revolves around. You want to be constantly switching monsties in depending on the monster’s elements and hitting double attacks, adjusting properly when a monster’s element changes throughout the battle. I think this makes combat a bit too easy, as smart playing will almost always result in the monster almost never taking a turn as you’ll constantly be doing double attacks. These double attacks also fill up your Kinship gauge tremendously which, when full, will let you do a powerful Ride attack that will cancel any monster’s action, including untyped attacks which cannot be double attacked. Kinship gauges reset after each battle but it’s certainly possible to fill multiple kinship gauges in one fight and use them accordingly for when you can’t use a double attack to cancel. As I said, careful decision making and planning will essentially allow you to never let the monster play the game, especially when you’re able to slot in skills that boost Kinship gauge recovery. It’s almost a bit comical really. While not a bad thing, one of the issues I have with this is that it almost incentivises you to never really use your skills. If you have the opportunity to do a double attack, why take the time to prep anything else? You can even remove your buddy from your party to make sure the monsters always target you or your monstie and just swim in double attacks. While not exactly a detriment, as you can always choose how to play and not use double attacks, to me it always bothers me when a game has multiple things going for its combat but make it very clear one is much stronger and the ideal choice to be using. Of course, as the game progresses, monsters will shake things up and use multiple actions in one turn, or start using untyped abilities commonly which will encourage you to break specific parts of their body to stop these untyped attacks, but it doesn’t change things too much. Much like normal MH games, you and your monstie share three faints, which on the third faint results in a loss, even if your buddy still has faints remaining. This applies to your buddy as well, if they run out of faints, this results in a loss. This gives you a good amount of room to make mistakes and do risky turns as you can also recover these faints with specific monstie abilities or items. It even helps to take a faint on purpose sometimes because it will completely heal you afterwards. Despite these grievances, I still found the combat very fun and even played around with trying to make skills feel good in using. Aside from the elements, you also have three weapon types that every monster, or their parts, are weak or resistant to. These types are Slash, Piercing, and Blunt, with weapons falling under these types; Greatswords and Sword & Shield fall under slash, Gunlance and Bow under piercing, Hammer and Hunting Horn under blunt. While a solid choice of weapons, I’m kinda disappointed they didn’t add more. I would love to see how Katana, Charge Blade, or Switch Axe would work in this game, though it’s likely they weren’t included intentionally as the focus of this game is on the monsties as opposed to your weapons. This makes me think this is exactly why the combat system is the way it is with double attacks and ride attacks being ridiculously strong compared to weapon skills. You can carry three weapons on you so ideally you have one of each type and switch accordingly depending on the monster you’re fighting. I think this sums it up for combat. As I said before, while I have some grievances, it’s still a very solid and tight combat system with enough room to play with.
I will not say much of anything about the Gene system because quite frankly I almost never touched it. I completed the main game perfectly fine without ever really using Rite of Channeling and just using my favorite monsties. The way it works is you can take a monstie and have them inherit a “Gene” from another monstie which are active or passive skills. You can only take one however and the monstie giving the gene will disappear afterwards. Combining identical genes will result in the skill getting stronger so you’ll want to be getting multiple monsties if you really want to fully maximize a skill. Each monstie can have up to nine genes placed in a 3x3 grid and having similar genes on one line either through element type or attack/passive type will result in a bingo, making those sets of skills stronger. It’s a system you want to use if you want to deck out your favorite monstie and make them unstoppable, though by no means necessary to complete the game. You don’t really unlock the best genes either until you get to post-game so it’s something I completely ignored personally.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The story is… well… it’s there. It’s a very simple, easy to follow story which is perfectly fine. To me though, it falls completely flat and that’s because of the characters. I think most of the characters are awful. Completely cardboard characters with only one personality trait to their name. I think I feel this way because most of these characters are apparently returning characters from the first game which I never played or touched, so they’re introduced in such a way that assumes you’re already acquainted with them, which is honestly a really bad thing to do from a storytelling perspective. I don’t care for these characters nor do I care for the very half assed background summaries they try to give them when they are in your party. Navirou is the biggest offender but that’s more of a personal thing for me since I HATE mascot characters who are basically your character’s voice because theyre a silent protagonist. I wish they had introduced a new set of characters really, though honestly, the characters unique to this game aren’t much better either. While Ena is basically the protagonist of the story, her character development is only the bare minimum and not particularly interesting. It’s also a huge detriment that she’s not a party member either, so for the most part of the game she’ll always remain in town while the game focuses on the current buddy you have. Kyle is even worse, as he’s supposed to be some sort of rival character who is a Hunter that doesn’t understand you, the Rider, or your perspective. He rarely shows up and eventually has that one singular story beat where his character suddenly goes “I’m… wrong?” and suddenly everyone is all buddy buddy with each other. These two characters are with you in the final moments of the game and it’s also so… anti climatic. Kyle, especially being part of the climax, bothers me tremendously because he just didn’t get enough screen time at all, but suddenly he’s there at the height of everything with his big moments at the end instead of me, the main character. The villains? Oh boy the villains. The villains are supposedly a cult-like group introduced halfway into the game that want to kidnap your Rathalos and use him for unknown but nefarious purposes(Pikachu?). However, they only show up twice throughout the entire story. Yes, twice. Once for the introduction… and one more time at the VERY end right before the final battle. I’m not even sure why they were introduced other than create a very thin and transparent reason for Kyle to get development. Speaking of, they also never mention what was up with the Hunter Association just casually assisting a doomsater cult. Also what happened to Kyle's dad???? The cult group is so inconsequential which is weird because afterwards the characters are constantly, “Watch out for the riders that want to kidnap your Rathalos” but… they don’t show up. None of the story beats involving this cult ever feel good, and the big reveal of the main villain is so flat and silly along with their purposes. I don’t even know what happened to them after everything, they just kinda never explained any of it. It’s just… awful.
SPOILERS END
Ultimately though, it’s not like Monster Hunter particularly excels in story for any of their games really. Stories in these games are generally just a means for you to fight monsters and do stuff. The story didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment, but I feel I should still include my opinions on it. It’s just a bit disappointing because this IS a jrpg, not only that but a whopping 30-40+ hour jrpg just for the main story alone and probably much longer for other people. It’s a huge shame too because as I said previously, the cutscenes and visuals are incredible. It feels bad that many of these visually stunning moments just don’t work when you don’t care for the characters. I think one would do well coming into this with low expectations for its story though some people might appreciate its simplicity. That’s just me though. The game is still really fun and one of the better turn based jrpgs I’ve played in a while and I still highly recommend it as a fan of Monster Hunter and jrpgs. I look forward to checking out the High Rank content and the future free updates this game will receive over time.
